Friday, July 29, 2011

Back in the heyday of the early 90's, at a dorm party at the University of Hawaii, a friend of mine walked over to the boom box blasting my copy of the latest Alice In Chains album "Dirt" and put in a different tape.

He said "Hey dudes....check this band out!"

It was the self-titled debut of Rage Against the Machine.

The blend of hip hop metal and rap immediately caught our attention.

I went and bought my own copy the next day.

Back in those days, buying an album was an event unto itself. My friends and I would breathlessly tear the wrapper off of the tape (this was right before I began collecting CD's instead) pop it into the stereo and read the lyrics as on the inside of the cover while the songs played.

This was back in my "Dittohead" CONservative kool-aid guzzling days.

Needless to say, Rage Against the Machine's lyrics were ripped straight out of Marx and Chomsky left-wing, anti-Capitalist manifestos. From that day forward, I had a special category for a band like Rage - "great music, idiotic commie liberal lyrics." I filed them away in by brain in the same place I put Pearl Jam.

Almost 20 years later, I cued up that first album again on my iPod while I was driving and gave it another listen...it's been close to 10 years since I've listened to that album.

My how my attitudes and beliefs have changed.

The song, "Know Your Enemy" is probably my favorite track on the album, but the ending of it always annoyed my right-wing/neo-con influenced attitude. I thought I knew what the American Dream was, and that Rage Against the Machine was just a bunch of useful idiots agitating to institute a communist revolution in the West.

Hearing that ending once again had me laughing at myself.

Within the last decade, I've now come to essentially the same conclusions that the singer, Zak Dela Rocha, is shouting about at the conclusion of the song.

While Rage has always been tools of the liberal/Democrat partisan political machine, and I've read interviews in which they basically aim all of their anger and protests at the "Right" and Republicans, their protestation of the status quo of America as it really is in today's Brave New World Order, still rings true.

I used to laugh at this band, because they used to always speak out about corporations and their influence on the government and the media...yet they were signed to a major corporation who produced, distributed and sold their albums and sponsored their tours.

Whether they were corporate hypocrites or not, they still spoke a lot of truth to power, and their lyrics are more relevant today than they were back in the early 90's, before we entered into the age of the USA Inc. Police State and our never ending War on Freedom, and Liberty in the name of Terror.

"What, the land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy!"

All of which are American Dreams? All of which are American Dreams!

As I think it was George Carlin who once said: "They call it the American dream, because you have to be asleep to fucking believe it."

Monday, July 25, 2011

Everything you email, text, google search, facebook, tweet, make a cell call...all of it, is stored at one of the multitude of over 40 information fusion centers that was created in the United States after 9/11.

Does this mean someone, somewhere is watching all your YouTube video clips and reading all of your emails and tweets and listening to your cell phone conversations? Nah. There's too many people generating too much data at any given moment to have a pair of human eyes and ears tracking it all.

But what it can do is compile, sort and store it in an easily retrievable record set -- this, by the way, is what I still believe is the true impetus behind Obama care -- so that should anyone in a position of authority decide you're a person of interest, they'll be able to punch in your social security number, your name, or whatever other means for which all that data is indexed, and pull it all up and begin sifting through literally years worth of your electronic communications.

Former National Security Adviser, Trilateral Commission Founder, a Council of Foreign Relations member and President Obama's top Foreign Policy Adviser (Obama was a student in Brzezinski's class at Columbia) during his Presidential campaign, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wrote this in 1970:

"The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities." - Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, 1970

41 years later, Brzezinski's prediction of a "gradual appearance" has come to pass.

Wonder what some bureaucrat or government lackey has the ability to look up about you?

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

This blog has never been one that had a lot of regulars that debate and socialize in the article comments threads. The responses are sporadic, and I think I get a lot more "Anonymous" posts than your average Manosphere blog. I am fully aware that the full range of topics I write about can be eclectic and many times "off the beaten path," and that's fine. This blog is really nothing more than an outlet for the things I don't really get to discuss in real life within my social peer group and family. It was only two months ago that I even discovered that Blogger had begun to offer traffic stats and such back in 2009...but looking at them confirmed what I have always suspected - I have far more readers than one would guess just based on the comments.

What amuses me though, is that I never know when a piece I write is going to get a lot of comments or not. Sometimes I write something that I expect will generate a lot of comments, and it only gets only 1 or 2 responses...and other times I write something I expect to get little response and the opposite happens.

My last post, Explaining Opportunity Costs to Career Women was one such surprise. The most amusing thing about it was the response by the person who's offhand comment over at OneSTDV's inspired the post in the first place.

I wasn't really out to 'get after' her...but that her comment that "she had it all" is one for which I've heard many a career woman exclaim. A lot of women fool themselves into believing that they did in fact "achieve it all." The only real point I was making is that 'having it all' is physically and temporally impossible.

As that prolific poster Anonymous wrote:

What kind of math puts more than 24 hours in a day?

What kind of math allows you to be in two places at once (home and work)?

What kind of math will convince your kids that they're better off spending 8 hours a day with a stranger rather than their mother?

I guess such basic mathematical logic was to hard to comprehend for a successful career woman like jz.

She actually commented and confirmed precisely the point I was making, but still failed to get it. Just as I suspected, she had a Nanny perform the Mommy role for her.

For 12 years my 3 kids were cared for in our home by the same woman. She is a physician's wife whose own children had grown.

No matter how well qualified she was, she was still hired to do the things you did not have the time for while you were busy with your challenging work making all that stunning income.

Her nurturing of them included intangibles that I could not have provided,

You could have. You just chose to pay someone else to do so for you.

including occasional same age playmates (her nephews), an exceptionally playful nature, new games, and she even took them on a mini-vacation. Each day she came, we spent time talking about how the day went. As a young mother myself, I valued her advice.

Do you really think that the amount of time and effort you put into your career, had it been applied to raising your children, you really believe you could not have provided them with games, mini-vacations and same age playmates?

The years progressed, she had grandchildren, and my own daughters babysat for her grandchildren. My kids were home for Christmas and they met to reminisce with her.

She was a great nanny who grew close with your children to the point that they treat each other like family. It is great that you were able to provide this sort of influence for your children....but it is THE POINT you keep missing. This is precisely why YOU did not "HAVE IT ALL." Your nanny had all of the things that I refer to when I say you could not have had it all. That is the opportunity costs you paid to focus on your career and paying another woman to raise and nurture your children for you.

Even in my part time years, I was paid beyond my wildest expectations. Contrary to happy platitudes, money does buy happiness.

I guess you missed the point of my headstone graphic on the last post?

It buys global adventure travel, choice of schools, choice of recreation, and choice of neighborhoods.

Of course, no one can deny the advantages wealth provides. But the human relationship of nurturing and parenting your own offspring? You wouldn't know, because you outsourced it. Perhaps that bought YOU happiness, as your children "flourished" under the nurturing of the hired help...so now you have the perfect status symbols to brag about when condescendingly telling the lowly proles how you in fact "have it all!"

No family energy is wasted on financial anguish.

I'd bet when your children were little, they had another sort of anguish to deal with. I'd bet my last dollar that at one point or another, your kids asked their nanny why Mommy is hardly around.

The OP knee-jerked on materialism, which is just trivial thinking.

My perspective on materialism is anything but a knee-jerk response, and it is certainly not trivial. What is trivial thinking is that by attaining career success to afford a luxury-filled lifestyle, is that you "had it all."

You didn't. You had material success, but you did not have maternal success. You paid someone else to do that for you.

By staying in the game, I can now stockpile money for grandchildren that I hope to have someday, and I can contribute to political causes.

JZ, those are important things to work for. Someone has to earn and provide for the family. I am NOT criticizing you out of some notion that you are a bad Mom for having a career and earning lots of money. We all have to do what we have to do to put food in our bellies, roofs over our heads and clothes on our backs. That you were a financial success is obviously a great source of pride...as it should be.

The only point I'm taking pains to point out to you is that despite your claims, you DID NOT HAVE IT ALL. I am only insisting on the truth here. You had a lot...but you missed out on a lot of things that you paid somebody else to experience for you while you were out dealing with the challenging work making your stunning income.

You've internalized the lies of our modern world - that financial and career success is the be all-end all measurement for success. Deep down, some part of you has to realize that your kids are bonded with and closer to their nanny than they are to you.

Which is precisely what I mean by you did NOT "have it all."

Now I can earn for another 15 years; SAHMs experience the opportunity cost of staying out of the market.

And career women experience the opportunity cost of staying out of the home and paying someone else to make it a home for you.

So, I'll reiterate that some women can have it all.

Only if you define "ALL" in terms of materialism.

You state that my dismissal of materialism as the measure of success was trivial.

I find it incredibly sad that you trivialize the most meaningful aspect of having and raising children...actually spending substantial and meaningful time with them as they grow. I'm sure you had many a moment that you had a moment of realization buried within yourself, covered up and hidden with rationalizations and justifications...moments in which you noticed the bond your children had with their nanny instead of you. Who did they run to for comfort when they got hurt as children? I bet there was multiple occasions in which they ran right past you (if you were even there...) to the comforting arms of their nanny.

This is my final comment here, because this is a blog that I do not respect.

I'm sure I'll manage to carry on...but I thank you for proving my point for me despite missing it for yourself.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

So the vast majority of women leave the home to do what: fetch coffee, take phone messages, babysit, and complain. Or, they could tend to the needs of someone they truly love instead of their irascible boss. They could prepare a nice home, pristine and comfy for their husbands and family. They can be present when their children arrive home from school, for emotional support, advice, homework help, and general supervision. They can spend many of their days socializing with other neighborhood housewives, fostering communal bonds amongst nearby families who ultimately become close friends.

Instead, we encourage women to slave away in a cubicle, convincing them that such empty work offers them satisfaction not available with her own husband and children.

Why of course...with her own paycheck, she can than participate in the official religion of USA Inc...worshiping at the alter of materialistic-based consumerism! What about all the shoes and handbags that could be bought with the extra income! Surely we must not deny women the opportunity for such fulfillment as a well stocked, walk-in closet!

But some anonymous female commenters on his thread raise some interesting points:

As a talented female academic, I disagree with you. I have no desire to "return to the kitchen." I don't think you will get women to subscribe to your idea in large numbers. And if you, as a society, don't keep your women happy, you won't be happy either.

Now just what is a "talented academic?" A womynz studies lecturer with tenure? And if society is supposed to keep our women happy, it sure seems like the current paradigm of encouraging all women to get educations and careers instead of getting married and raising children as housewives has failed spectacularly in that regard...

Never fear though...there are still a number of ladies who believe that despite the widespread decline in female happiness in the past 40 years, they've managed to HAVE IT ALL!

Take a look at another female commenter on OneSTDV's article:, jz wrote:

We tell women the conventional wisdom, "you can't have it all." In fact, some women (myself) have had it all: flourishing children, challenging work, stunning income, and a fun husband.

There are so many meme's and shibboleths that manifest in such a short statement...

First of all: "We tell women the conventional wisdom, "you can't have it all."

Oh dear. In what part of the world does jz live in? The idea that women CAN HAVE IT ALL is one of the most popular memes to permeate our feminist-driven mass media culture for close to 50 years now! Most women don't hear that message "you can't have it all!" and when someone tries to point it out, they usually respond like jz here: "In fact, some women (myself) have had it all!"

No doubt this is based on her kids getting good grades in our dumbed-down education system. She might even go the extra step here and have them enrolled in all sorts of extra-curricular activities like organized team sports or music lessons. Her kids may in fact be "flourishing." But how would she know, since she's not around while they're flourishing? She's at her career, HAVING IT ALL. I guess there's dinnertime conversation...if there not like most modern day families eating their dinner in front of the television, perhaps they do talk about the days endeavors in school.

Challenging Work

Now one cannot deny that in fact "challenging work" can certainly be rewarding...but I would point out the implications of such a statement in the context of a woman declaring that she HAS IT ALL. By describing her career work in those terms, she is also implying that a stay at home housewife's work is NOT challenging...that raising children is not as challenging - which also implies that it is not as rewarding.

But don't worry! They're getting good grades! They're on the local championship soccer team! The kidz are FLOURISHING!!!!

Stunning Income

Which probably means jz and her "fun husband" most likely outsource much of the domestic tasks and chores necessary to keep a house clean and functioning. Gardener, maid, nannies....STUNNING I tell you!

Here's one thing women like jz fail to understand until it is too late...

There is only so much time in a single day. You can only do so much with that time.

You cannot "HAVE IT ALL" because most of your time, effort, energy and attention is focused on your 'challenging work.' If it didn't require all of that, it wouldn't be challenging.

Therefore, time spent on the career, means time NOT spent in actually raising your children. You let the schools and after-school organized sports or lessons handle most of the "challenging work" in that department for you.

You may not realize it now, because your kids are "flourishing" and you get to brag to your work peers that your kids got great grades...

...but just how much of a part of their lives are you really?

Maybe one day, when you are at home and retired, enjoying your stunning income...and you realize that your kids are flourishing in their own careers, and the only time they call or visit you is when they HAVE to (like your Birthday or the Holidays), and you'll realize that you don't really know them as people (but your nanny who actually raised them does!) you'll discover that you in fact did not HAVE IT ALL.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

On a whim, I decided to do a little background research on Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World. I found the text to a speech he gave in 1962 at The University of California, Berkley. I found that speech to be rather illuminating...as he references the differences between his vision of the future control of the masses by a technocratic elite versus Orwell's vision of an authoritarian regime stomping on a human face forever.

Huxley has been connected with the Fabian Socialists, which is generally referred to as the source of insights he gained to write his frighteningly accurate portrayal of the not-too-distant future...our current world.

While his book was written in 1931, he gave the speech at Berkley 30 years later, a lot of his prognostications had already come to pass. After hearing or reading the transcripts to this speech, can there be any doubt that Huxley was doing more than just writing science fiction?

If you are going to control any population for any length of time, you must have some measure of consent, it's exceedingly difficult to see how pure terrorism can function indefinitely. It can function for a fairly long time, but I think sooner or later you have to bring in an element of persuasion an element of getting people to consent to what is happening to them.

Seems like 9/11 and a few other manufactured incidence have introduced an element of persuasion to get we the sheeple to consent to the revocation of our basic rights supposedly guarded by the US constitution.

It seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: That we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably will always exist to get people to love their servitude.

That was in 1962. I think said techniques have been developed and deployed and that their efficacy is undeniable. Most people don't even realize that they are slaves in our Brave New World Order. In fact, when you try to explain to them how they are enslaved, they get angry and denounce a truth-teller as being crazy or worse yet, a "conspiracy theorist." Yes, many present day people certainly love their servitude...

This is the, it seems to me, the ultimate in malevolent revolutions shall we say, and this is a problem which has interested me many years and about which I wrote thirty years ago, a fable, Brave New World, which is an account of society making use of all the devices available and some of the devices which I imagined to be possible making use of them in order to, first of all, to standardize the population, to iron out inconvenient human differences, to create, to say, mass produced models of human beings arranged in some sort of scientific caste system. Since then, I have continued to be extremely interested in this problem and I have noticed with increasing dismay a number of the predictions which were purely fantastic when I made them thirty years ago have come true or seem in process of coming true.

Huxley said that in 1962. He'd shit himself if he saw how much of his vision of dystopia had come to pass 70+ years later. Hell, one look at a typical TSA security checkpoint and the officially sanctioned sexual assaults our 21st century gestapo performs on the mostly compliant masses would certainly verify his theory about people consenting to being controlled.

But his next point was even more interesting regarding the percentage of humans that are "suggestible":

"You'll find for example that the experienced hypnotist will tell one that the number of people, the percentage of people who can be hypnotized with the utmost facility (snaps), just like that. is about 20%, and about a corresponding number at the other end of the scale are very, very difficult or almost impossible to hypnotize. But in between lies a large mass of people who can with more or less difficulty be hypnotized, that they can gradually be if you work hard enough at it be got into the hypnotic state, and in the same way the same sort of figures crop up again, for example in relation to the administration of placebos.

A big experiment was carried out three of four years ago in the general hospital in Boston on post-operative cases where several hundred men and woman suffering comparable kinds of pain after serious operations were allowed to, were given injections whenever they asked for them whenever the pain got bad, and the injections were 50% of the time were of morphine, and 50% of water. And about twenty percent of those who went through the experiment, about 20% of them got just as much relief from the distilled waters as from the morphea. About 20% got no relief from the distilled water, and in-between were those who got some relief or got relief occasionally.

So yet again, we see the same sort of distribution, and similarly in regard to what in Brave New World I called Hypnopedia, the sleep teaching, I was talking not long ago to a man who manufactures records which people can listen to in the, during the light part of sleep, I mean these are records for getting rich, for sexual satisfaction (crowd laughs), for confidence in salesmanship and so on, and he said that its very interesting that these are records sold on a money-back basis, and he says there is regularly between 15% and 20% of people who write indignantly saying the records don't work at all, and he sends the money back at once. There are on the other hand, there are over 20% who write enthusiastically saying they are much richer, their sexual life is much better (laughter) etc, etc. And these of course are the dream clients and they buy more of these records. And in between there are those who don't get much results and they have to have letters written to them saying “Go persist my dear, go on” (laughter) and you will get there, and they generally do get results in the long run.

Well, as I say, on the basis of this, I think we see quite clearly that the human populations can be categorized according to their suggestibility fairly clearly,. I suspect very strongly that this twenty percent is the same in all these cases, and I suspect also that it would not be at all difficult to recognize and {garbled} out who are those who are extremely suggestible and who are those extremely un-suggestible and who are those who occupy the intermediate space. Quite clearly, if everybody were extremely unsuggestible organized society would be quite impossible, and if everybody were extremely suggestible then a dictatorship would be absolutely inevitable. I mean it's very fortunate that we have people who are moderately suggestible in the majority and who therefore preserve us from dictatorship but do permit organized society to be formed. But, once given the fact that there are these 20% of highly suggestible people, it becomes quite clear that this is a matter of enormous political importance, for example, any demagogue who is able to get hold of a large number of these 20% of suggestible people and to organize them is really in a position to overthrow any government in any country."

Ah, but here in the 21st century, the demagogues of our mass media culture are owned and controlled by the ever-present oligarchy Huxley referred to earlier. They've already got a solid lock on the masses of suggestible people...both the 20% who are highly suggestible and the 60% who are moderately so.

The 20% who are un-suggestible to the modern day hypnotism of our mass media culture?